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Businessline March 08, 2020 By  Mike Dolan Many investors are perplexed by the reluctance of governments to use near-zero borrowing costs to crank up investment spending to reboot growth, inflation and even fight climate change. The coronavirus shock may finally break the logjam. The rapidly spreading virus threatens to bring global economic activity to a grinding halt. Central banks are reacting, but they do not have much room to support the economy. With inflation still dormant and falling, it is puzzling why governments don't embrace borrowing to both stimulate activity and invest in future infrastructure. For Kelly, the next move for governments is obvious, if not inevitable. He reckons Berlin, Washington and London will now have to use fiscal expansion in a way that goes far beyond remedial cash to fight the COVID-19 virus because targeted measures will not be enough. “Whether you support it or not, it feels like a slow-moving dance to MMT,” said Kelly,...

Businessline March 08, 2020 By  Amiti Sen Showing flexibility, India has submitted a fresh proposal on capping fisheries subsidies at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The approach also signals a move away from its earlier demand seeking exemption for all developing countries from the prohibition of subsidies to vessels. As per the revised proposal, large-scale industrial fishing vessels and larger developing countries meeting criteria such as per capita gross national income of over $5000 may not be exempted from the prohibition, a Geneva-based trade official told BusinessLine. “At a recent meeting on fisheries, India stated that its revised proposal shows flexibility to move forward and conclude negotiations by June this year at the Kazakhstan Ministerial meeting of the WTO,” the official said. India’s proposal was a revision of its earlier one made in June 2019. In its earlier proposal, India had sought exemption for all developing countries and Least Dev...

Businessline March 08, 2020 By  S Adikesavan The latest Economic Survey is wrong in saying that public sector banks are comprehensively inferior to new private banks Were it not for its appalling contextual irony, some of the stark conclusions put out in the Economic Survey 2019-20, tabled in Parliament before the Budget, could have been ignored as fallacies of inference which economists can commit. In a strong indictment of the entire public sector banking system in the country, the Survey begins its chapter on the golden jubilee of nationalisation by postulating that “on every performance parameter, the PSBs are inefficient compared to their peer groups”. This statement is prefaced by the sentence, “As PSBs account for 70 per cent of the market share in Indian banking, the onus of supporting the Indian economy and fostering its economic development falls on them”. The first question that arises is: Could India have achieved whatever it has on the economic front w...

Money control March 09, 2020 The government has asked Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani to explain the software major's failure to fix glitches in the Goods & Services Tax Network (GSTN), The Times of India reported. Nilekani has been asked to make a presentation before the GST Council next week, the report said. The council is scheduled to meet on March 14. The government recently extended the deadline for filing GST returns after Infosys' executives were unable to resolve the technical bug. The issues included login errors, auto logouts and delays in receiving on-time passwords (OTPs). Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report. The finance ministry had raised the issue directly with Nilekani over a month ago, the reported stated. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is in charge of the GST Council, discussed the GSTN issue, including Infosys’ role, with officials last week, the report said. In February, GSTN said it is setti...

Making Smalltalk Diwali is one of the biggest festivals in India – lights & diyas glitter houses, sweets take over the diets, and there’s a celebratory atmosphere in almost every street of the country. Diwali is also a time when a large part of the country buys gold. Given the high value of gold, many gift it to near & dear ones as a sign of showing affection & reinforcing the relationship – the amount of gold being gifted often being directly proportional to importance of that relationship. Gold is also used in the religious ceremonies taking place during Diwali. In fact, so deep rooted is gold’s association with Diwali (and weddings) in India, that perhaps gold is the most purchased thing in the Diwali period.  But how did this come to be? Has it always been like this? And is this craze for gold only in India, or a reflection of the broader cultural significance of gold across the world? The Origins of Gold Since the dawn of human societies, go...

Deccan Herald March 06, 2020 By  Shemin Joy Adding more power to counter-terror grid, the security establishment is now planning to expand the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), a nodal establishment for sharing intelligence inputs among various agencies at present operating at national and state levels, to districts even as the contribution from state agencies to the mechanism is "low". The national-level MAC, set up after the Kargil intrusion, is located in Delhi while state capitals have subsidiary MACs (SMACs) where daily meetings are held to analyse inputs received in the previous 24 hours. Now, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) along with the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the nodal agency for the MAC, is "thinking of"  extending the connectivity of SMACs to the district level. The Intelligence Bureau is picking up districts in a phased manner as there is an "issue of connecting them with the lease line, encryptors etc". This was disclosed ...

Dailyhunt March 10, 2020 The United States has rejected the formation of an Afghan government led by opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah parallel to that of President Ashraf Ghani. Both Ghani and Abdullah held parallel swearing-in ceremonies in Kabul on Monday throwing the country into a major political crisis amid the ongoing peace process, Efe news reported. "We strongly oppose any action to establish a parallel government, and any use of force to resolve political differences," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad was present at Ghani's oath-taking ceremony, while Abdullah's swearing-in took place in the presence of local leaders. This political crisis has been brewing since September, when the holding of the elections was marked by low participation amid threats from the Taliban and subsequent allegations of massive fraud by Ghani's rivals. D...

Dailyhunt March 10, 2020 Democratically elected Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) President Lobsang Sangay on Tuesday urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is visiting China's restive Xinjiang region, to visit Tibet too to monitor human rights conditions there. "We welcome the recent announcement of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet's decision to visit Xinjiang this year," Sangay said here in a statement on the 61st anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day. "However, we strongly urge her to visit Tibet and press China for unfettered access in order to monitor the deteriorating human rights conditions in Tibet," he said . Sangay said under the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the CTA, Tibetans in South Asia are recognized as one of the world's most successful and effective refugee communities. "If the Chinese government harbours any hope that the Tibet issue will...

The Hindu March 12, 2020 By  Happymon Jacob The recently negotiated peace deal between the United States and the Taliban  is unlikely to bring peace to Afghanistan, is geopolitically disadvantageous for India, and has serious implications for our national security. The terms of the deal, the manner in which it was negotiated as well as the geopolitical context in which it was stitched up indicate that it was more about providing an honourable exit route for the U.S.’s Trump administration from its military campaign in Afghanistan than about ending violence in the country. Within 24 hours of the much-publicised deal, violence and major disagreements about the deal began erupting in Afghanistan. Given that the Taliban negotiated from a position of strength, the Trump administration from weakness and little political will, and that the Ashraf Ghani administration in Afghanistan was by and large a clueless bystander in all of this, means that the country is perhaps on th...

The Hindu March 13, 2020 By Stanly Johny Oil prices saw their biggest single-day crash in almost 30 years on March 9, throwing global equity markets into turmoil. The price of a barrel of Brent crude closed down 24% at $34.36 after a price war was initiated between Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world’s largest oil producers. It recovered slightly on March 10, but crashed again. On Thursday, Brent crude price was hovering around $33 a barrel. Prices crashed by almost 50% this year, from $66 a barrel on December 31, 2019 to the current levels, primarily driven by lack of demand. What happened to the OPEC-Plus alliance? After 2014 “glut” diplomacy which brought down prices below $30 a barrel, Saudi Arabia and Russia came together to cut output and steady prices. Known as the “OPEC Plus” arrangement (Russia is not a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC), this alliance kept production lower and pumped up the prices. The OPEC-Plus coopera...

Scroll.in March 13, 2020 Urban Indians are becoming less confident about their financial security. Up to 58% of them fret over financial independence post retirement, which is a 4% increase from last year. An equal share of urban Indians worry about meeting their daily medical expenses and sustaining their current lifestyle once they stop working. The findings are part of a survey published by Delhi-based Max Life Insurance in association with London-based consultancy Kantar. The firms surveyed 7,014 respondents in 25 cities, including six metros, nine tier-1 cities, and 10 tier-2 cities, between December 2019 and January 2020. Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz The trends Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz A significant share of urban Indians also say their families will have no financial support in the event of the breadwinner’s death. In such a scenario, around 57% believe the family sav...